


The Silent Ghost

by Specbubble



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Drabble, Fluff, M/M, Sad, romantic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-29
Updated: 2013-09-29
Packaged: 2017-12-27 23:43:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,223
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/985043
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Specbubble/pseuds/Specbubble
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I really liked this post on Tumblr, and decided, like others have, to write a little fic based on this idea.<br/>http://watsonsandholmes.tumblr.com/post/62634717375/thatrandomcontradictorychick</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Silent Ghost

Grief is not an emotion with an easy fix. Short of the person who has died springing back to life and screaming “TRICKED YOU”, there is no solution to the problem.

John did all the things he thought he should. He cried, he lost weight, he didn’t sleep very much and he felt a bit hollow. People rallied around him at first and then slowly but surely, they withdrew themselves, going back to living in the world conveniently forged around their heads. 

It is hard for your friends to see you in pain. Some stay away because they fear they will say the wrong thing or somehow make it worse. John didn’t know how to tell people that they needn’t fear that, because it simply didn’t get any worse.

Lestrade and Mrs Hudson in particular feared for John. They knew how endlessly, hopelessly and easily John and Sherlock’s lives had intertwined and woven until their lives stopped being two straight lines and became one double helix. John and Sherlock loved each other. 

This was known and accepted by their closest friends. John drove Sherlock mad with his neatness, his irritation at having his sleep interrupted, his clucking around Sherlock like a mother hen, clutching a piece of toast he attempted to insert into that smart, busily talking mouth. But Sherlock adored John- his loyalty, his faith, his sturdiness. His quietly intelligent mind, his emotional sensitivity. His presence was reassuring and comforting, and as steady and sure as the knowledge that each day, the sun will rise. 

Sherlock drove John mad with his bluntness, his total lack of social grace, and how it was like essentially living with a six foot, permanently caffeinated, violin playing, angry, sugar fuelled toddler. Who didn’t eat or sleep. His bizarre body parts in every area of the home, his endless venture, it would seem, to deprive his body of every single thing it needed. But John adored Sherlock. That brilliant, sizzling, sparkling brain. His incredible knowledge, his sharp wit and sharper brain. He was a whirlwind of unpredictability, and John was gladly swept along with it.

Without him, everything was too quiet. John’s flat, John’s mind, John’s life.

John woke up one night, having only fallen asleep around twenty minutes earlier, to find piercing grey cat eyes watching him through the dark.

This was a problem for John in many senses of the word. For one, he was not wearing any clothes. Secondly, he slept with Sherlock’s silky bathrobe wrapped around his pillow, breathing in its musky, spicy scent, soaking it silently with his tears. Thirdly, this was not his bed but in fact Sherlock’s bed in Sherlock’s room. This was before he even began to address the small fact that a man whose funeral he had himself attended was sitting in his room. 

John wasn’t that surprised, because he had always expected to see Sherlock again.

He lifted the edge of the covers of the bed. Sherlock’s mouth dropped like a penny down a well, and then his slipped off his suit, leaving himself clad in his boxers and undershirt, and climbed in next to John. John coiled himself around Sherlock’s frame, and sobbed. He wept and he wailed, poured every ounce of pain he had felt into Sherlock’s chest. He ran his hands over Sherlock’s body, again and again. He pressed a kiss to his temple, and fell soundlessly into a dreamless sleep. 

John’s next problem came that morning. Above being wrapped around some six foot of sleeping detective totally naked, Sherlock was somehow still here.

So John, being John, got up and made tea. He returned with two mugs, and left one on the bedside table for Sherlock. He went to the living room and drank his tea. Sherlock came and sat with him. John said nothing, not feeling like he was ready, or able to. When Sherlock rose from his chair and jammed his frame into John’s chair, John simply moved mug to table, and arranged Sherlock’s spidery limbs around him. He rested his nose in his hair, more wild and dark than he remembered, and breathed him in over and over again. 

He removed the second mug of tea from the bedside table sometime later. It hadn’t been touched.

When John went to take a bath, Sherlock sat on the toilet with the lid closed, watching silently. He rubbed shampoo into John’s hair, slid a bar of soap over his chest. When tears fell from his eyes too, John flicked them away and kiss his closed eyelids, gently. 

When John made food, he offered some to Sherlock, who didn’t take any.

He put on a movie, and Sherlock coiled around him like a very well dressed blanket, and they watched. When John went to bed that night, Sherlock followed at John’s heels, like he had been all day. John relaxed into bed, and slithered around Sherlock like a silk ribbon, lost in his scent. His fingertips touched every part of Sherlock. They counted moles and freckles, marked the arch of eyebrows and the delicate line of a hip, as though committing each beautiful detail to memory.

In the morning, Sherlock was still there. He and John had faced each other that morning in bed, and one slender white hand had joined one sturdy and strong caramel hand under the cover. John had squeezed, and noted that Sherlock was as bone cold as ever. His eyes had lost their sparkle, he seemed paler and more translucent. Sherlock opened his mouth again to speak, then stopped, shook his head. Tears flowed over his alabaster skin, which John smoothed away, then kissed away. So white, so cold, so sad. Oh, Sherlock.

John was going to address this…this…whatever this was at some point, but right now, every fibre of his being was singing and swaying with happiness. He hadn’t dared himself to speak yet, to leave the flat even. His mind and soul and body were crying to the wind- This. So much this. This is what I needed, what I prayed for, what I dreamt about. You couldn’t make me let go, wild horses couldn’t drag me away.

But John knew this wouldn’t last forever. Still, the supermarket or even the café was out of the question, not when Sherlock was in the flat. But John, being John, creature of habit that he is, did venture downstairs and stick his head out of the doorway to pick up a paper. Mrs Hudson squeaked like an indignant mouse that has just been stepped on, and steered him by his forearm into her constantly warm flat.

“Oh John…I…I didn’t know what to do. I’ve been arguing with myself since last night. Should I go up? Should I leave for a while? Should I phone Lestrade? Does he know? Does anyone know? I must say, I cannot even begin to imagine how you must be feeling. John…John my dear…are you okay? How are you John now that…now that...” Mrs Hudson swallowed delicately and adjusted her necklace. “Now that Sherlock is back?”

“You…you saw him too?” John whispered.

“Sherlock” said Mrs Hudson, as his lanky frame filled her doorway.

Slowly yet gracelessly, like a puppet with cut strings, John Watson, battle seasoned badass Doctor, fell to the floor in a dead faint.


End file.
